eBay enables brands to target shoppers who are in the mood to buy

Ebay is enabling brands to target shoppers who are in the mood to buy.

It has launched a new Mood Marketing tool following a pilot with Laithwaite’s Wine over the summer. The retailer used the tool, part of eBay Advertising’s Advanced Targeting solutions, to target shoppers identified as being in a ‘summery’ state of mind through the way that they behaved on the site. Those shoppers were then served adverts for summer-themed drinks.

The tool uses anonymised behavioural data to identify shoppers who are in a particular mood.

Rob Bassett, head of UK and EU multinational advertising at eBay , said: “We want to change the way that retailers think about engaging with shoppers online and help them to see that the most effective campaigns aren’t about selling, but about helping people to buy.

“Our scope of inventory means we can understand what a shopper is interested in at a given time, across a huge number of categories, and therefore pinpoint what mood they are in. It’s perfectly possible, for example, for a consumer to be planning festive activities, such as parties, on a Monday morning but many brands will be weighting ad spend to the end of the week. At this point, shoppers may have already purchased their party items, and brands will have missed a valuable opportunity to tap into their mindset. Worse still, they risk being perceived as irrelevant.”

John Buffey, head of ecommerce at Laithwaite’s Wine, said: “We have a diverse customer base, who are shopping at different times, in different ways and for different reasons. Rather than just targeting them at certain points in the week or in specific weather conditions, we wanted to complement the mood they are already in, and offer them ads that improved their shopping experience. This pilot has definitely made marketing by mood a priority for us in future campaigns.”

eBay Advertising says its Mood Marketing tool can also be used to refine brand perception. Marketers that want to associate their brand with specific moods or mindsets will be able to use it to serve brand building ads to consumers who are in the mood that they’re targeting.

Bassett continued: “We may have started with summer mindsets, but the Mood Marketing concept can be applied to many themes: from buying a home to purchasing Christmas decorations. We believe it represents a real step forward in making ads more relevant, inspiring and useful to shoppers, and that it will take the guesswork out of planning campaigns.”

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